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President Donald Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its journalists on Monday, according to court documents.The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Florida names several articles and one book written by two of the publication’s journalists and published in the lead up to the 2024 election, saying they are “part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump.”“Defendants published such statements negligently, with knowledge of the falsity of the statements, and/or with reckless disregard of their truth or falsity,” the lawsuit says.The New York Times did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment early Tuesday.In a Truth Social post announcing the lawsuit, Trump accused The New York Times of lying about him and defaming him, saying it has become “a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.”Trump has gone after other media outlets, including filing a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein. Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Luigi Mangione is due to appear on Tuesday in New York state court, where a judge may rule on the 27-year-old’s bid to dismiss one of the two indictments he faces over the December 2024 killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges of killing Thompson, the former chief executive of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance unit UnitedHealthcare. Thompson was shot and killed on December 4 outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where the company was gathering for an investor conference. Mangione’s 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) appearance before Justice Gregory Carro in Manhattan comes as last week’s killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has fueled fears of a spike in political violence in the U.S. Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Kirk’s killing is expected to be formally charged with state crimes in Utah later on Tuesday. Elected officials from both the Republican and Democratic parties have condemned the killing. While the killing of Thompson was also widely condemned by public officials across the political spectrum, Mangione has become a folk hero to some Americans who decry steep healthcare costs. In May, Mangione’s defense lawyers asked Carro to dismiss the state case, arguing that facing parallel prosecutions violated his constitutional right against being prosecuted twice for the same conduct. “Prosecutors are trying to get two bites at the apple to convict Mr. Mangione,” wrote the defense team, led by former Manhattan state prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo. In state court, Mangione is charged with murder as a crime of terrorism, which carries a potential life sentence. Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office say Mangione was intending to intimidate workers in the health insurance industry and spark a revolution in U.S. health care. The Justice Department is seeking the death penalty in the federal case, which charges Mangione with stalking Thompson across state lines and killing him. Mangione’s lawyers have said the two cases are based on conflicting theories. They wrote in their motion that if their client were theoretically to defend himself against the state charges by arguing his conduct was intended to target a single individual, rather than to sow terror, he may end up incriminating himself in the federal case. In a June response to Mangione’s motion to dismiss, prosecutors with Bragg’s office said there was no basis for Mangione to argue it was unfair that a potential defense in one case could compromise his defense in the other. “The unpleasant options facing this defendant arise out of his own depraved actions,” prosecutors wrote. Trial dates have not yet been set in either the state or federal case. Mangione has been held in federal custody in Brooklyn since his arrest in December. Luc Cohen, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Robert Redford, the Hollywood golden boy who became an Oscar-winning director, liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema under the name of one of his best-loved characters, died Tuesday at 89.Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement. No cause of death was provided.After rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford was one of the biggest stars of the ’70s with such films as “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” and “The Way We Were,” capping that decade with the best director Oscar for 1980’s “Ordinary People,” which also won best picture in 1980. His wavy blond hair and boyish grin made him the most desired of leading men, but he worked hard to transcend his looks whether through his political advocacy, his willingness to take on unglamorous roles or his dedication to providing a platform for low-budget movies.His roles ranged from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward to a mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” to a double agent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his co-stars included Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. But his most famous screen partner was his old friend and fellow activist and practical joker Paul Newman, their films a variation of their warm, teasing relationship off screen. Redford played the wily outlaw opposite Newman in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a box-office smash from which Redford’s Sundance Institute and festival got its name. He also teamed with Newman on 1973’s best picture Oscar winner, “The Sting,” which earned Redford a best-actor nomination as a young con artist in 1930s Chicago.Film roles after the ’70s became more sporadic as Redford concentrated on directing and producing, and his new role as patriarch of the independent-film movement in the 1980s and ’90s through his Sundance Institute. But he starred in 1985’s best picture champion “Out of Africa” and in 2013 received some of the best reviews of his career as a shipwrecked sailor in “All is Lost,” in which he was the film’s only performer. In 2018, he was praised again in what he called his farewell movie, “The Old Man and the Gun.”“I just figure that I’ve had a long career that I’m very pleased with. It’s been so long, ever since I was 21,” he told The Associated Press shortly before the film came out. “I figure now as I’m getting into my 80s, it’s maybe time to move toward retirement and spend more time with my wife and family.” Sundance is born Redford had watched Hollywood grow more cautious and controlling during the 1970s and wanted to recapture the creative spirit of the early part of the decade. Sundance was created to nurture new talent away from the pressures of Hollywood, the institute providing a training ground and the festival, based in Park City, Utah, where Redford had purchased land with the initial hope of opening a ski resort. Instead, Park City became a place of discovery for such previously unknown filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky.“For me, the word to be underscored is ‘independence,'” Redford told the AP in 2018. “I’ve always believed in that word. That’s what led to me eventually wanting to create a category that supported independent artists who weren’t given a chance to be heard.“The industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good about that.”Sundance was even criticized as buyers swarmed in looking for potential hits and celebrities overran the town each winter.“We have never, ever changed our policies for how we program our festival. It’s always been built on diversity,” Redford told the AP in 2004. “The fact is that the diversity has become commercial. Because independent films have achieved their own success, Hollywood, being just a business, is going to grab them. So when Hollywood grabs your films, they go, ‘Oh, it’s gone Hollywood.'”By 2025, the festival had become so prominent that organizers decided they had outgrown Park City and approved relocating to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027. Redford, who had attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, issued a statement saying that “change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow, which has been at the core of our survival.”Redford was married twice, most recently to Sibylle Szaggars. He had four children, two of whom have died Scott Anthony, who died in infancy, in 1959; and James Redford, an activist and filmmaker who died in 2020. Redford’s early life Robert Redford was born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on Aug. 18, 1937, in Santa Monica, a California boy whose blond good looks eased his way over an apprenticeship in television and live theater that eventually led to the big screen.Redford attended college on a baseball scholarship and would later star as a middle-aged slugger in 1984’s “The Natural,” the adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s baseball novel. He had an early interest in drawing and painting, then went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, debuting on Broadway in the late 1950s and moving into television on such shows as “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Untouchables.”After scoring a Broadway lead in “Sunday in New York,” Redford was cast by director Mike Nichols in a production of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” later starring with Fonda in the film version. Redford did miss out on one of Nichols’ greatest successes, “The Graduate,” released in 1967. Nichols had considered casting Redford in the part eventually played by Dustin Hoffman, but Redford seemed unable to relate to the socially awkward young man who ends up having an affair with one of his parents’ friends.“I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser,'” Nichols said during a 2003 screening of the film in New York. “And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘OK, have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking.” Indie champion, mainstream star Even as Redford championed low-budget independent filmmaking, he continued to star in mainstream Hollywood productions himself, scoring the occasional hit such as 2001s Spy Game, which co-starred Brad Pitt, an heir apparent to Redfords handsome legacy whom he had directed in A River Runs Through It. Ironically, The Blair Witch Project, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite and other scrappy films that came out of Sundance sometimes made bigger waves and more money than some Redford-starring box-office duds like Havana, The Last Castle and An Unfinished Life. Redford also appeared in several political narrtives. He satirized campaigning as an idealist running for U.S. senator in 1972s The Candidate and uttered one of the more memorable closing lines, What do we do now? after his character manages to win. He starred as Woodward to Hoffmans Carl Bernstein in 1976s All the Presidents Men, the story of the Washington Post reporters whose Watergate investigation helped bring down President Richard Nixon. With 2007s Lions for Lambs, Redford returned to directing in a saga of a congressman (Tom Cruise), a journalist (Meryl Streep) and an academic (Redford) whose lives intersect over the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. His biggest filmmaking triumph came with his directing debut on Ordinary People, which beat Martin Scorseses classic Raging Bull at the Oscars. The film starred Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as the repressed parents of a troubled young man, played by Timothy Hutton, in his big screen debut. Redford was praised for casting Moore in an unexpectedly serious role and for his even-handed treatment of the characters, a quality that Roger Ebert believed set the film apart from the sophisticated suburban soap opera it could easily have become. Redfords other directing efforts included The Horse Whisperer, The Milagro Beanfield War and 1994’s Quiz Show, the last of which also earned best picture and director Oscar nominations. In 2002, Redford received an honorary Oscar, with academy organizers citing him as actor, director, producer, creator of Sundance, inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere. The idea of the outlaw has always been very appealing to me. If you look at some of the films, its usually having to do with the outlaw sensibility, which I think has probably been my sensibility. I think I was just born with it, Redford said in 2018. From the time I was just a kid, I was always trying to break free of the bounds that I was stuck with, and always wanted to go outside. Associated Press journalists Hillel Italie, Jake Coyle and Mallika Sen contributed to this report. Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the principal writer of this obituary. Bob Thomas, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
An “everything rally” in markets greets the start of a two-day Federal Reserve meeting, with stocks at record highs, bond yields subsiding and a two-month low dollar taking the heat ahead of what is widely expected to be the first U.S. interest rate cut of the year. A quarter point Fed rate cut on Wednesday is fully priced. But the spotlight is as much on the central bank’s institutional standing as on the policy call itself, after a pair of developments underscored the White Houses growing sway over the Fed. Meanwhile, gold set a new record high, and China’s offshore yuan hit its highest level of the year after positive signs from the U.S.-China trade talks in Madrid. The Senate’s narrow confirmation of Stephen Miran to the Fed’s Board hands President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser a policy vote just as the FOMC convenes, while a U.S. appeals court ruling means Governor Lisa Cook can attend unless the Supreme Court intervenes. Together with Trump’s public call for a ‘bigger’ cut and his stated intent to replace Chair Jerome Powell when his term ends next May, the moves highlight the degree of political pressure now bearing down on the central bank. Ahead of a 20-year bond auction later today, long-term Treasury yields hover close to four-month lows. Big Tech led Wall Street gains on Monday, with Tesla shares climbing 3.6% after regulatory filings revealed CEO Elon Musk had acquired nearly $1 billion worth of the electric vehicle maker’s stock last week and Alphabet hit a record high to race past $3 trillion in market capitalization. Nvidia underperformed after China’s market regulator said it will continue an investigation into the AI chip leader after early findings showed it had violated the country’s anti-monopoly law. Although the S&P500’s year-to-date gains of 12% are still only half of that of the MSCI world index excluding U.S. stocks, funds tracking the ‘Magnificent Seven’ megacaps are now up 16% for 2025. S&P futures were higher again ahead of Tuesday’s open. China’s offshore yuan hit 2025 highs even though its ebullient stock benchmarks stalled on Tuesday after U.S. and Chinese officials said they reached a framework agreement to switch short-video app TikTok to U.S.-controlled ownership – a move expected to be confirmed in a Friday call between U.S. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Madrid talks encouraged hopes of another extension of the trade truce beyond the world’s two biggest economies beyond November. Elsewhere, data showed the British jobs market and wage growth softened ahead of this week’s Bank of England meeting and German investor morale unexpectedly strengthened in ZEW’s September update. In today’s column, I discuss how euro zone credit markets are converging, erasing the old ‘core-periphery’ divide and reshaping the bloc’s borrowing dynamics. Today’s Market Minute U.S. President Donald Trump sued the New York Times, four of its reporters, and publisher Penguin Random House for at least $15 billion on Monday, claiming defamation and libel, and citing reputational damage, a Florida court filing showed. U.S. and Chinese officials said on Monday they have reached a framework agreement to switch short-video app TikTok to U.S.-controlled ownership that will be confirmed in a Friday call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. U.S. companies should be allowed to report earnings every six months instead of on a quarterly basis, Trump said on Monday, announcing what could prove to be a major shift for corporate America. The U.S. labor market appears to be deteriorating rapidly just as the country’s housing market is also creaking, two negative forces that risk feeding off each other and smothering economic growth. Read the latest from ROI markets columnist Jamie McGeever. While U.S. corporate taxes and interest rates fell over the past 40 years, the federal deficit soared. Does that mean the federal government is now justified in taking a slice of corporate profits and is this the tax hike the United States needs? Find out in Robinhood Markets Chief Investment Officer Stephanie Guilds latest piece for ROI. Chart of the day In the increasingly polarized world of American politics, there is bipartisan agreement that Americans are less tolerant of opposing views than they were 20 years ago, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey. Today’s events to watch U.S. August import/export prices (8:30 AM EDT), August retail sales (8:30 AM EDT), August industrial production (9:15 AM EDT), September NAHB housing index (10:00 AM EDT), August business/retail inventories (10:00 AM EDT); Canada August housing starts (8:15 AM EDT), Canada Aug consumer prices (0830) U.S. Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee starts two-day meeting on interest rates, decision on Wednesday U.S. President Donald Trump visits Britain US Treasury sells $13 billion of 20-year bonds Want to receive the Morning Bid in your inbox every weekday morning? Sign up for the newsletter here. You can find ROI on the Reuters website, and you can follow us on LinkedIn and X. (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters) Mike Dolan, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Here’s a mash-up you didn’t see coming: It turns out that LimeWire was the mystery buyer of the Fyre Festivals brand assets back in July, when it spent $245,300 to acquire the failed music festival’s trademarks, intellectual property, and social media off eBay. But branding doesn’t really follow mathematical logic: Does the combination of two failed but infamous brands equal a net positive? LimeWire’s betting on it. Fyre Fest’s new owner believes it can take the meme value of the failed festival to power something new that audiences will still find familiar. (Besides, it’s LimeWire. It can’t be too scared about Twitter dunks.) A test case for two wrongs making a right Anyway, neither company has had much success on its own. LimeWire is the Y2K-era peer-to-feer file-sharing service that in the early aughts offered internet users access to free, illegally downloadable music, all from the comfort of their home computers alongside competitors like Napster and Kazaa. LimeWire shut down in 2010, but Austrian brothers Julian and Paul Zehetmayr bought up the assets and relaunched it as an NFT platform in 2022. And the 2017 Fyre Fest was, of course, a flop. Billed artists like Blink-182 pulled out, and after festival organizers suffered severe logistical failures they stranded attendees on an island in the Bahamas eating cheese sandwiches out of Styrofoam containers. Never mind that those attendees spent thousands of dollars to attend. Accommodations included disaster relief tents. And founder Billy McFarland’s plans for a Fyre Fest II never got off the ground. But what Fyre Fest did do wellif by accidentwas establish real brand recognition by becoming something of a schadenfreude content factory, inspiring a pair of documentaries on both Netflix and Hulu. Ryan Reynolds also referenced it in a 2019 ad for his brand Aviation Gin, in which he detailed just how far he was willing to go for his company. “He gets it,” Fyre festival investor Andy King said in the ad. The name “Fyre Fest” itself has become a cautionary tale and pop cultural shorthand for hubris and failure. Reynolds and his production company Maximum Effort bid on Fyre Fest as well, though LimeWire outbid them. Maximum Effort then got in touch after the auction, Julian Zehetmayr tells Fast Company, and the two entities have already collaborated. Most immediately, the Fyre Fest brand appears briefly in a new ad Reynolds narrates for Visa that reimagines the company’s famous “It’s everywhere you want to be” slogan. Zehetmayr says they have other plans for the brand name, though he declines to share specifics. “Congrats to LimeWire for their winning bid for Fyre Fest,” Reynolds said in a statement. “I look forward to attending their first event but will be bringing my own palette of water.” LimeWire, Fyre Fest, and the trick to reviving zombie brands Zehetmayr says he learned from his experience with LimeWire what not to do when buying up a “zombie brand,” or a failed brand that’s worth something only because it’s well-known. (Napster and Enron, which have been repurposed by new buyers, offer additional examples.) The most important thing is sticking to what people know the brand name for. “One thing that we’ve learned with buying brands is that obviously you can’t go too far from the original concept,” Zehetmayr says. After the Zehetmayrs bought LimeWire, they turned it into an NFT platform. But in 2024 LimeWire added decentralized file sharing, once again making the site a file-sharing platform. This time, however, it’s for legal and encrypted files. Julian Zehetmayr says he and his brother are being intentional with the Fyre Fest brand, and “not trying to rush ourselves too much,” but they plan to make an announcement as soon as early next year about what they plan to do with it. Zehetmayr says they’re not bringing back the festivalor the cheese sandwichesbut they are bringing back the brand and meme through experiences. “We’ve got quite a few concepts,” he adds. The value of the Fyre Fest brand, he says, is in the attention that it gets, but one thing he says they won’t do is take it too seriously. “I think we’ll do the whole thing with a lot of self-awareness and humor, so we’re not pretending that we are buying a premium brand,” he says. He also sees the LimeWire and Fyre Fest brands as complementary. “The brands kind of match,” Zehetmayr says. “Both very infamous and chaotic, both obviously very music and entertainment focused as well.” They also hit different age groups. While millennials might all know LimeWire, Fyre Fest “kind of also bridges the gap,” he says, for everyone under 28 who’s too young to remember the file-sharing era. Like buying restaurantsor even a gin brand or sports team, for that matterbuying up zombie brands can require a gentle touch. Stray too far from what the brand’s known for and you lose the power of the name ID that you bought in the first place. As Zehetmayr says: Stick to the core that the brand represents.
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E-Commerce
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